More than 35 years ago, calls were made for research on the constitutive role of accounting. Since then, many statements have been made to specify what accounting is or is not. This study describes what accounting does, in order to amalgamate a fragmented picture of accounting in practice, instead of seeking the answer to the existential question of what accounting really is. The purpose of this study was to investigate and describe what accounting does, and how this is done on the basis of business meetings in order to contribute to a better understanding of the role of accounting in practice.This study is based on the actor-network theory approach. Particular attention hasbeen paid to accounting as named numbers, when becoming a performative participantin framed situations. The framed situations of business meetings contained three elements; 1) pure calculation, 2) qualculation which include both calculation and judgments, and 3) calqulation as a collective social process. An ethnographically inspired field studywas carried out at Eton Fashion AB, a Swedish shirt making company. Data was collected by participant observations of business meetings supported by interviews. Photography, sound recording, and field notes were used as techniques for documentation.Diagnoses of five business meetings revealed that; 1) accounting restricted time,place and content, 2) accounting brought past and future into the present, 3) accounting summarized and obscured discontinuities, 4) accounting defined people and things, and 5) accounting called for the filling of content. Accounting became an actor in these five ways as they were allied with people and things that appeared in the meetings. Accounting was in a context where people made sense of situations by making both estimates and judgments. During the meetings, an ongoing reduction of complexity was taking place. Step by step, diversity and complexity were reduced until an order filled with numbers was the only thing remaining. At the same time, something was gained, as we step by step achieved greater legibility, transportability and universality. In this way the situation could subsist. It might move to new situations and it might allow for new summaries and new situations to take place. The situation of a meeting contained elements of pure calculation representing the cold, anonymous and empty part. Oftenthough, calculation, because of its emptiness, initiated for qualculation and calqulation to begin. Accounting as an idea is a taken for granted phenomenon, with influence, often far beyond what we can see when we find ourselves in a given situation. I conclude that it could have been some other way. It is not accounting in itself, its own excellence or ability to represent the truth, which makes it successful. The success story of accounting is simply about “the others” with whom accounting is an ally. / För avläggande av ekonomie doktorsexamen i företagsekonomi som med tillstånd av Handelshögskolans fakultetsnämnd vid Göteborgs universitet framlägges för offentlig granskning fredagen den 30 mars kl. 13.15 i CGsalen vid Företagsekonomiska institutionen, Vasagatan 1, Göteborg.

The aim of this thesis is to explore the interplay between economics, gender, and materiality in an economic sector that has received little attention from performativity scholars: agriculture. During the early 20th century, Swedish agricultural education was organized along gendered lines. I study how male and female schools differed in their economics education. In so doing I will explore the question: How were economic and non-economic agents assembled in Swedish lower agricultural education during the first half of the 20th century? To answer this the thesis follows a rural domestic school and an agricultural school, intended for female and male students respectively. The method is a qualitative text analysis of firstly archival material from the schools, secondly textbooks in agricultural economics and bookkeeping, and thirdly Swedish Government Official Reports. The main finding is that performance of economic theory creates both the economic and the non-economic. The farm as a unit of production and reproduction was split into home and business, in an act of interessement. The two forms of smallholder education were reformulated as agricultural education and domestic education, thereby placing the young men in a productive sphere and the young women in a domestic, reproductive sphere. Economic agents were assembled in the agricultural school as resources for qualculation were provided, not least through economic and agronomic quantification. In the rural domestic school, conversely, resources for qualculation were removed as women’s farm labor was framed as an expression of immeasurable maternal love. The economic actor was thus assembled in relation to his female Other. In summary, performing the economic man means performing economic and performing man.

Comment les coûts et les tarifs hospitaliers sont-ils devenus des objets politiques centraux depuis le début des années 1980, quels espaces controversés produisent-ils aujourd'hui et comment ces controverses agissent-elles sur ces instruments gestionnaires d'action publique ? C'est à ces questions que la thèse se propose de répondre en étudiant la genèse, les usages et les déplacements de plusieurs instruments d'action publique en matière hospitalière : système d'information, calcul de coûts par séjours, instruments d'ajustement budgétaire et système de tarification. En articulant sociologie politique des instruments de gouvernement et sociologie des techniques et de l'innovation, ces dispositifs sont étudiés dans les multiples sites où ils se déploient : ministère de la Santé, agence technique, centres de recherche en gestion, instances d'expertise, fédérations hospitalières, associations de malade et hôpital public. La thèse montre comment ces instruments ont profondément transformé l'hôpital en un être de gestion et de finances. La tarification à l'activité, appelée T2A, tient une place centrale dans ces transformations et est ici analysée comme un instrument de qualcul visant à quantifier et à qualifier les patients, les séjours, les maladies, voire l'hôpital public lui-même. La thèse montre comment ce processus de qualculation génère des controverses métrologiques où des acteurs se saisissent des dispositifs pour refaire les qualculs, ces controverses supposant une forme relativement nouvelle de travail critique. / How costs and tariffs have become pivotal policy instruments to govern public hospitals in France since the early 1980's? What kind of controversies do they produce and what feedback effect do these controversies have on these instruments? These are the questions I propose to answer in this PhD dissertation by analysing the genealogy, the uses and the transformations of several policy devices: information system, cost accounting, budgetary regulation instrument and pricing payment system. Combining a sociology of policy instruments and science and technology studies, these devices are analysed in the multiple sites where they spread: ministry of Health, public agency, research centres in management studies, hospital federations, patients organizations and public hospitals. The dissertation exposes how these devices have turned public hospitals into accounting and financial entities. I specially focus on the pricing payment system (called T2A) which is analysed as a qualculation instrument as it qualifies and quantifies patients, stays in hospitals, diseases, and public hospital itself. The dissertation shows how this qualculation process produces metrological controversies in which actors put into question the way things are qualculated.